The poverty we have today is a massive inefficiency that we can solve, and be better off for having done so. We can have a larger, better global economy, generating more surplus for this kind of research.
Yes, as I mentioned in the last paragraph here, I take a more favorable view of “helping poor people” charities that actually achieve this. Validating this requires more than just counting lives saved, though.
Right. Well I think that’s our critical differing assumption.
My view of these charities would be different if I didn’t think the gains appreciated. I’d donate to a science or technology endeavour if I thought that the next generation would be exactly the same, and all a donation could do was provide an anaesthetic.
The general opinion seems to be that foreign aid has saved lives from disease, holding per capita income fixed, and gains in life expectancy and infant survival have probably increased total (but not per capita) GDP through larger populations, but there is very little evidence of a positive effect on GDP per capita, i.e. reducing poverty.
Analyses tend to find weak effects of aid, which disappear when replicated on new datasets, and effect sizes tend to shrink as sample size and data quality increase. The literature also shows the usual signs of data mining and publication bias like spikes around the significance threshold, disproportionate reporting of positive results, etc. See this article, for instance.
The Gates Foundation, GiveWell, and many others seem to buy the basic model that public goods (agricultural and medical research for Gates, vaccines) work, and public health can generate welfare/save lives, but are not great for economic development.
I don’t want to claim that we now understand how to do aid without making mistakes. But I do want to say that decades of bad aid have not accomplished as much as they might have if they were actually designed to help the poor (rather than win the Cold War, support American farmers, or other political goals.) I think it’s reasonable to expect that evidence-based aid will do better than aid as a whole has so far.
It seems that knowing if and to what extent a charity helps people become productive participants in the economy would be valuable to you. As near as I can tell, GiveWell does not rate charities on this criteria. As it sounds like you are planning to donate a substantial amount, you should consider contacting them about making an earmarked donation (I don’t know if they actually do this, but it is worth trying) for a research project to establish such ratings.
GiveWell has an economic empowerment category, but says that the efficacy and transparency of interventions and charities in that sector are too poor to recommend anything in the category in comparison with public health.
Yes, as I mentioned in the last paragraph here, I take a more favorable view of “helping poor people” charities that actually achieve this. Validating this requires more than just counting lives saved, though.
Right. Well I think that’s our critical differing assumption.
My view of these charities would be different if I didn’t think the gains appreciated. I’d donate to a science or technology endeavour if I thought that the next generation would be exactly the same, and all a donation could do was provide an anaesthetic.
The general opinion seems to be that foreign aid has saved lives from disease, holding per capita income fixed, and gains in life expectancy and infant survival have probably increased total (but not per capita) GDP through larger populations, but there is very little evidence of a positive effect on GDP per capita, i.e. reducing poverty.
Analyses tend to find weak effects of aid, which disappear when replicated on new datasets, and effect sizes tend to shrink as sample size and data quality increase. The literature also shows the usual signs of data mining and publication bias like spikes around the significance threshold, disproportionate reporting of positive results, etc. See this article, for instance.
The Gates Foundation, GiveWell, and many others seem to buy the basic model that public goods (agricultural and medical research for Gates, vaccines) work, and public health can generate welfare/save lives, but are not great for economic development.
I don’t want to claim that we now understand how to do aid without making mistakes. But I do want to say that decades of bad aid have not accomplished as much as they might have if they were actually designed to help the poor (rather than win the Cold War, support American farmers, or other political goals.) I think it’s reasonable to expect that evidence-based aid will do better than aid as a whole has so far.
It seems that knowing if and to what extent a charity helps people become productive participants in the economy would be valuable to you. As near as I can tell, GiveWell does not rate charities on this criteria. As it sounds like you are planning to donate a substantial amount, you should consider contacting them about making an earmarked donation (I don’t know if they actually do this, but it is worth trying) for a research project to establish such ratings.
GiveWell has an economic empowerment category, but says that the efficacy and transparency of interventions and charities in that sector are too poor to recommend anything in the category in comparison with public health.